China’s Space Exploration Ventures Playing Catch Up With The United States

China wants to be a world leader in space. The latest feat involved a lunar lander that scooped samples from the regolith on the Moon’s far side and returned it to Earth this month. Launched on May 3rd, the Chang’e-6 lunar orbiter and lander mission made a successful soft landing on the Moon. It spent two days drilling for subsurface samples as well as harvested surface soil and rocks located within a south-pole crater over 2,570 kilometres (1,600 miles) wide. The samples were deposited in an ascent module located on the lander. Then the module was launched from the surface to rendezvous with the orbiter before heading to Earth and landing in Mongolia on June 25th.

The samples include volcanic rocks estimated to be 1.2 billion years old, significantly younger than samples retrieved by Apollo that date back 3.8 billion years. Why the difference? The side of the Moon we never see appears heavily cratered and is very different from the relatively benign features we see in the sky on the tidally locked surface that always faces us.

The Two-Horse Race to Exploit and Explore Space

The current new space race appears to be between the United States and its partners and China with possibly Russia as a partner. The goal for both is to send humans to the Moon and establish permanent bases near the lunar south pole where there is water ice deep inside craters.

A Business Insider article published yesterday is keeping score of the lunar rivalry with China leading 4 to 0.5 in terms of successful landings. That low score for the U.S. includes commercial launches to the Moon that have suffered recent failures in attempted landings and operations.

China has experienced a continued series of successes. In 2021 it deployed a lander and rover on Mars, only the second space program to achieve this feat. Called Zhurong, the Chinese lander and rover remained active for more than 347 Martian days before dust and sand rendered them inoperative.

China has another success. It is its space station, a small version of the multi-nation International Space Station (ISS). China’s is called Tiangong, which means heavenly palace. The station is modular and was completed in the fall of 2022. It accommodates a crew of 3 and can manage 6 onboard between mission changes. China claims Tiangong is solely used as a testbed for future space technologies and biology, physics and astronomy experiments.

China has announced plans to establish a permanent presence near the Moon’s south pole. That’s where the Artemis Program has plans to build a lunar base. Americans returning to the Moon isn’t likely to happen until the latter half of this decade. A permanent base is probably a decade away with challenges coming from the Agency’s commercial partners and the reluctance to increase the NASA budget. Meanwhile, China predicted it will start building its permanent lunar base by 2028 and permanently occupy it in the early 2030s.

China doesn’t appear adverse to militarizing its space program in Earth orbit and on the Moon according to NASA and the American military. Where the Apollo Program grew out of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, since the lunar landings beginning in 1969 and ending in 1972, the military in both countries have limited themselves to surveillance and spying from Earth orbit. This detente according to U.S. Space Command (USSC), the military arm of America’s space program, may end with China’s capabilities challenging America’s space predominance.

General Stephen Whiting, the USSC Commander has stated that “China is moving at a breathtaking speed” referring to its space program and notes that since 2018 the country has tripled its surveillance satellites.

NASA’s Administrator, Bill Nelson, has echoed these opinions arguing that China may want to establish a territorial claim to lunar real estate ending the Outer Space Treaty’s non-proprietary use of space that was agreed to by 132 countries in 1967 and by China in 1973. That treaty defines outer space including the Moon and the planets and other bodies within the Solar System as areas where peaceful cooperation in science and exploration are the model.

The Americans now are suggesting that China is building a military “kill web” of integrated intelligence and warfare capacity that includes both outer space and Earth-based deployments. Whiting describes China’s “counterspace weapons” designed to disrupt American satellites. Holding the high ground of space by establishing a military presence on the Moon may be an outcome of the race between the United States and China to build a permanent presence at the lunar south pole.

NASA’s Nelson points to China’s behaviour on Earth with its territorial claims to the South China Sea as well as Himalayan border regions facing India. He sees these as indicators of future behaviour when dealing with lunar real estate. Back in China, however, this negative view is being refuted by those working in the space program

What neither Whiting nor Nelson mention is NASA’s Artemis Accords, the agency’s attempt to establish principles for future space exploration and exploitation that portend to update the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. To date, 43 countries have signed the Accords. China hasn’t.

Section 10 of the Accords deals with space resources, their extraction and utilization whether on the Moon, Mars, comets, or asteroids. It states that extraction doesn’t constitute “national appropriation” meaning no country can own these space bodies or constituent parts of them. Ownership of what is extracted, however, is another issue. Private enterprise concerns still need to be fully addressed with the growth of commercial space companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, ULA and others.

China is not a signatory to the Artemis Accords but is to the Outer Space Treaty. So what happens if NASA extracts water or helium-3 from the Moon under the Accords and China objects? Or if China does the same and Artemis Accords signatories object?

As for militarizing space, other than surveillance and spy satellites, no weapons have made it to space other than a rifle that was included with a Soyuz capsule just in case when it returned to Earth, upon opening the crew wouldn’t have to deal with angry or hungry bears in Siberia.